


A Marine Aubade

by Septembers_coda



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Big Brother Dean, Boats and Ships, Brother Feels, Brotherly Love, Creepy, Dean Sings, Dolphins & Whales, Drunk Dean, Dysfunctional Relationships, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fog, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Grieving Sam, Hurt Sam, Hurt/Comfort, Mark of Cain, Merpeople, New England, Ocean, Singing, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-30
Updated: 2014-06-30
Packaged: 2018-02-06 21:10:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1872552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Septembers_coda/pseuds/Septembers_coda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam might be lost to the ocean forever. And Dean might have to let him be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Marine Aubade

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brightly_lit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/gifts).



Sam went out on the boat for every reason but the ones he gave Dean.

He didn’t do it to check for EMF around the lighthouses and cottages on the shore, areas inaccessible by car. He didn’t do it to search the rocky shoreline with binoculars for signs of violence or anything amiss. He didn’t do it to research the tides, so they could predict the movements of the monster that seemed to depend on them; the monster, which might be a ghost, which might be nothing at all.

He did it to hear the wind and the low, mysterious song of the tide, to feel the humid chill and the sharp, salt sting of the air, to feel the barnacles on the side of the boat scrape his hands as he pushed it out into the water, to feel the freezing water fill his boots and soak the legs of his jeans, imbuing the smell of briny death. He did it to let the waves rock away his loneliness and grief. He did it to stop not talking to Dean, to stop suffocating in that silence, the ear-splitting silence that accused him, every moment, of not being enough, of not loving even when love was cracking him apart, of not dying and of not staying alive the _right_ way.

He did it to forget Bobby, Dad, Jo, Ellen, a dozen others… and Kevin. God, Kevin. His mind shuddered away from the touch of that memory, his own and someone else’s, as from a slap to a blistered sunburn.

Strange, he thought, as he steered his rowboat around the rocks and shoals, out onto more open water. He and Dean had hardly ever worked a case near the ocean. The heartland, supposedly the wholesome home of upstanding Americans, seemed to be where most evil lurked. Sam had lost track of how many abandoned farmhouses and gritty Midwestern warehouses they’d been tied up in, rescued each other from, burned down, or riddled with bullets over the years.

As haunted as this place looked—with its decaying lighthouses and shadowy woods crowding the shore, the creepy New England churches pressing their spires through the fog, the unfriendly rocks lurking to stab at boat hulls with sharp stone fingers—Sam wasn’t convinced there was anything here. Nothing to account for all the disappearances of late, except hidden rocks, undertow, sudden squalls, and tricky tides. And probably booze. Don’t drink and boat, Sam thought.

If Dean had known the danger, he never would have let Sam go out. Knowing this, Sam went out several times each day, sometimes for hours. As the land receded behind him, his pain became more distant, too. His secret docking place was out of sight now… in fact, he couldn’t really see the shore through the fog. When had that come up? It had been mostly clear when he shoved off. Now…

Well, now it didn’t seem to matter. The fog embraced him with cold, comforting arms, folding him close and closing off the rest of the world. It muffled sound, dimmed the light of the sky into a beautiful pearlescent haze, and made the water seem so close, as if it could come inside him, as if he could breathe it.

Maybe he could. He tried, out of habit, not to think it, but maybe it was time to let go. Dean… he had held on so tightly Sam was bruised, and for his sake Sam had white-knuckled his way through life, but he was dragging Dean down, and Dean did not want the depths the way Sam did. Dean wanted air and light. Sam wanted silence and cold, stillness and shadow and soft, comforting nothingness. Suddenly, he wanted them so badly he could smell them, pungent moss and a flavor of brine on his tongue, and a song filtering through the mist, a cold, marine aubade of ethereal beauty, wishing him farewell, but he did not want to leave…

_Why should you leave?_ a voice didn’t quite whisper, barely insinuated. Perhaps it was his own mind, except did his thoughts usually sound like music?

It was growing darker, and the mist was so cold it began to feel warm against Sam’s exposed skin, sneaking gentle fingers under his collar, against the small of his back where his shirt rode up when he leaned forward to row… but he wasn’t rowing anymore. Had he shipped the oars safely? He couldn’t see them.

The caress of the mist, the voice of his thoughts, and the music of the waves swelled into true music. It was like the seductive sounds of an orchestra warming up, calling him to his seat for a performance he was eager to hear, and a distant voice singing—a beloved voice he couldn’t quite remember, over his crib, in the back of the Impala, from the shower in the bathroom of a house he’d never known. The most devastatingly beautiful voice, and it knew his name.

_Sam,_ it said. _Don’t go._

Why should he go anywhere but beneath the gently rocking waves? He could remember no reason at all as he slipped easily from the forgotten boat, and felt the ocean take him in its arms, the cold, loving embrace of a mother he could not remember, carrying him home.

~ * * * ~

There was a little bit left in Dean’s bottle of whiskey, but he’d thrown the cap away, so he might as well finish it. He was already drunk enough that Sam would be pissed when he got back to the cabin they’d rented. Dean chuckled softly to himself. Pissed. He should be so lucky. Sam didn’t care enough to be pissed. He probably wouldn’t even look at Dean when he came in. He…

Where was Sam?

It occurred to Dean, dimly through the haze he’d created in an attempt to dull the burn of the Mark, that it was dark. Long since. Sam couldn’t boat in the dark. Maybe he’d taken the car somewhere, and Dean had been too drunk to notice… he stumbled to the window and looked out. The Impala, silvered under the moon, looked back at him. Right where he’d parked her.

He’d better go find Sam. He might’ve gotten himself in trouble. Kid was good at that. He…

As Dean staggered toward the door, palming his gun and trying to remember where he’d put his boots, he became tangled in his own body somehow, and a dim blankness claimed him as he hit the floor.

He woke up with light shining directly in his eyes—a beam of disconcertingly bright sun that made him feel like an ant under a magnifying glass. _Now_ the sun was out? He covered his eyes and rolled over, cursing as the motion made his gun bruise his ribs. Actually he felt bruised all over. Why was he on the floor?

The discarded whiskey cap that had rolled under the chair answered that question pretty handily. Dean groaned. Sam was going to…

He shot upright, instantly awake. Jesus. He’d passed out just when he was getting worried about Sam, and now… “Sam?” he said reflexively as he looked sharply around the cabin.

Utter silence, except for the distant, ever-present sound of waves. Dean got to his feet, tucking the gun that had bruised him into his waistband, and grabbed his keys.

~ * * * ~

Dean rowed out onto the water, vibrating with anxiety. It had taken him hours to be sure Sam’s boat was missing and to find a boat of his own to go out looking. Dread such as he had rarely known settled on Dean as he left the shore behind. Monsters were one thing. Hell, he’d take another apocalypse right now, and go down fighting. But he couldn’t fight the ocean.

It felt unfriendly, watchful, like a school teacher who was onto him and wasn’t going to let him get away with anything. The waves slapped the prow reproachfully. The tide tried to push him back toward land. The small, noisy motor he activated when he was clear of the shoals seemed pitiful against the strength of the waves.

Lasering into his brain when he woke up that morning had been the first time Dean had seen the sun since they’d gotten to this gothic, haunted-seeming place. It didn’t make the ocean any less intimidating, though. The gruff Mainers they’d spoken to had told them it was an uncertain time of year to go out on the water. No one seemed to want to be responsible for renting them a boat. Sam had simply found an unattended rowboat and “borrowed” it for the duration, but Dean knew he needed something a little faster. Not that this piece of junk, held together by barnacles and hope, was going to win any races. And he’d had to _buy_ the thing, for at least twice what it was worth, he was sure. Lucky he’d had a pocketful of cash from his last pool hustle. 

He’d also located a rough map of the coast, hoping it would help him find the places Sam’s boat might have gotten stuck or wrecked. It was a thin hope, but his only one. As a result, he was steering for exactly the places experienced sailors and fishermen would avoid.

He’d managed, by the sheerest dumb luck imaginable, to escape one hidden cove surrounded by rocks after finding no sign of Sam there, and another series of shoals he’d been sure were going to scrape the boat to pieces, when he saw the dolphins.

There were smaller, skinnier, and less… cartoon-cute than the Flipper-style dolphins Dean would’ve expected. With a sudden, sharp ache, forgetting the reason he was there, he simply wished Sam were with him. Sam would know what kind of dolphins they were. And he would love this. Dean could almost see him shading his eyes to watch the dolphins leap, laughing at their antics as they squealed and circled and nudged each other. But this image sobered Dean. He realized that he hadn’t seen the Sam who would watch and laugh and feel that joy in a long, long time.

As he slowed the motor to its lowest, puttering setting to avoid hitting the dolphins, Dean realized something. The dolphins were aware of him. They kept swimming closer, and circling back behind him. It was like they were… herding him?

Dean didn’t know much about dolphins. He wondered if these ones could be cursed or monstrous or something. But he did recall that dolphins had been known to rescue humans, even to lead the coast guard to stranded boats. He felt a stab of hope, so sharp it was almost painful. He steered the boat carefully after them. Once he’d begun following, they started leaping faster ahead.

They led him into a cove, and after a few moments, Dean felt cold disappointment pooling in his belly. The dolphins weren’t leading him anywhere. They were only playing. The ones around his boat had led him back to a larger group, and now they were ignoring him, leaping and sporting in the waves with each other.

Well, he could check the cove for signs of shipwreck, or of Sam. He steered his boat closer to shore, careful not to scrape bottom. A dolphin occasionally approached his boat, but he ignored them now. He felt like they’d betrayed him.

He had circled the cove twice and seen nothing unusual or helpful, and was about to leave, when a dolphin gave a sharp, piercing call that made him turn his head.

In time to see a green, web-fingered hand slide from the dolphin’s back. A moment later, a giant fish-tail briefly flicked the surface before disappearing under the waves.

Dean gaped in disbelief for several minutes. He killed the motor on his boat and sat absolutely still. After a long while, his patience was rewarded with the flip of a fishtail here, the brush of a hand along a dolphin’s back there, and finally, the barest glimpse of a beautiful face veiled by long green hair.

He cursed silently. _Mermaids._

And… mermen, he supposed. When one finally broke the surface entirely, he noted that it had long hair brushing the gills on its neck, but a broad-shouldered, masculine body above its fishtail. It made a fluting noise, both animal and hauntingly musical, as it rolled its body over the back of a chattering dolphin.

As it turned, Dean saw a pentagram in a circle of sun-rays on its chest.

~ * * * ~

Sam swam through green-grey depths, and his heart was light. Friends swam around him, their bodies rubbing his pleasantly at times, their song filling his ears.

Surely he had been born here. There was a time when he had lived somewhere else. A bad time. Everything was too hard and bright, hot and loud and wrong, and there had been so much pain. Here, there was only cool, quiet music, beauty, peace.

His body was made to glide these waves, to part this lovely forest of kelp, to breathe these bubbles and sing these songs. Other beings lived here, too, great, slow, gentle creatures whose deep song harmonized with that of his people, whose warmth Sam could feel when he swam next to them. Other, smaller creatures, possessed of a quicker warmth, sang higher and lighter and leapt often into the air above. Sam sometimes stuck his head above the waves to watch them, and they chattered to him and danced for him, but he felt wrong there, began to remember wrong things, and so he couldn’t stay for long.

He didn’t like what he remembered, so he swam fast away from it. His people followed and sang for him, spoke to him of the sea that was their home and how it welcomed him. He listened intently until he had learned all their voices, all their songs, listening for one voice that was missing. He never found it. He could not hear that voice, except in a shadowed memory he couldn’t quite grasp, like a wily fish slipping from his web-fingered grip. Yet it kept calling for him. It kept telling him not to forget.

~ * * * ~

Dean returned to the cove the next day, close to sunset, praying he had enough time, that he could find his brother, that what he was doing was the right thing.

The merpeople were there. Dean saw them, quieter now, aware of him. He was afraid they’d swim away, but they didn’t seem afraid of him.

In fact, they began to sing.

Dean shut his eyes, concentrating. He’d done his research. The song could only lead him away if he wanted it to. If he wanted to give up on this world and live in the ocean. It was how the few surviving mermaids, the real kind, not sirens, reproduced themselves. They converted humans—ones in the depths of despair, or victims of shipwrecks who would otherwise die. A pod of them must have settled here on the depressing Maine coast, and that was why so many people had gone missing here.

It must have been so easy to take Sam—their easiest victim yet.

As the haunting, beautiful song filled his ears, Dean couldn’t really make himself think of them as victims. More like… converts.

He wondered if, if he gave in to the pull of the music, it would free him from the Mark. For just one moment, he contemplated another choice. 

But this moment wasn’t about his choice. It was about Sam’s.

He called Sam’s name a few times. This silenced the music briefly before it began again, hesitantly. Just one mer-voice this time. Dean squinted against the light of the setting sun flashing on the waves, and saw the merman who was singing.

Sam.

He was… beautiful. It made Dean uncomfortable to think of him that way, but he was. A truly magnificent creature, yet still Sam. Still his brother.

Sam was singing to Dean, louder all the time, a note of desperation entering into his voice. Dean couldn’t distinguish any words, but he understood the meaning. _Come with me._

“I can’t, Sam,” Dean said sadly. “I… can’t leave so much undone.”

“Listen,” he continued. “I… know how much you hate me. For forcing you back. For taking your choice away. And I finally get it. You were right.”

Sam gazed at him across several yards of restless water, his look animal and uncomprehending. Dean had no idea if there was enough of Sam left in there to understand him. He knew there wouldn’t be for long. After a few days in the sea, the human was gone forever. It was too late to save any of the others—if they had wanted to be saved.

Dean raised his voice a little. “So. I’m not gonna do that again, Sam. I could’ve left you at Stanford. I could’ve let you go back to Amelia. And I could’ve let you…” He stopped. “That last one, Sammy. Letting you die. I don’t know if I could. But I know it was wrong to decide for you. The choice is yours this time. Because… you won’t be dead.”

Sam was eerily silent, an alien creature staring at him unwavering.

“I thought my job was to keep you here, no matter what. The job that Dad gave me. Now I’m thinkin’ I was wrong. Or he was wrong. Hell, it’s a wrong sort of world, Sam. But it’s the only one I’ve got, and you’re the only brother I’ve got.”

Sam started away, and Dean’s heart clenched. No. Not yet.

“But… no, Sam,” he continued hurriedly, and Sam turned his head toward him again. “It doesn’t matter. You were right that it was selfish. You’re right that I don’t want to be alone. I don’t like this world much, Sammy. But I think you like it even less than I do. I… I can’t fight the whole world. I can’t make it better for you. I’ve been tryin’ since I was four years old, and I just can’t.” 

Dean took a deep breath. “So… I got the spell. I think it’s not too late to change you back. But I won’t. Not unless you say so. If… if you want to be the Little Mermaid, go ahead. Under the sea, man. Everything’s better down where it’s wetter. I get that. I won’t stop you.” 

He took a deep breath. “But I’m not ready to give up yet, Sam. Despite everything, I still want to fight. And to do that, I… need you. If you can stand it. I want my brother back.”

Sam was still, his web-fingered hands resting on the waves, long, green hair plastered to his neck. Dean despaired suddenly. He’d read some conflicting reports, some of which claimed mermaids could only understand music. He didn’t know a song that would say what he needed to say to Sam.

But maybe he should sing anyway. Sam had always made fun of him for singing off-key, and for his taste in music. He didn’t know what to sing, except maybe what had always soothed him, had always made him feel better when he was afraid, sad, and lonely. It might not work on Sam, but it might work on himself.

“Hey, Jude,” he began, low and hoarse. Sam flinched and made a startled fluting noise. _Yeah,_ Dean thought. _I know._ But his voice gained strength as the water echoed it back at him. He pretended he was in the shower, thought about the better times with his little brother, and belted it out.

Sam disappeared. So. This was it then. This was their goodbye. Dean’s heart broke in half, yet somehow, he kept singing.

_And anytime you feel the pain, hey Jude, refrain_  
 _Don't carry the world upon your shoulders  
 ____For well you know that it's a fool who plays it cool  
 __By making his world a little colder…_ __

He strained his eyes for one last glimpse of his brother before he rowed away. His voice lost strength, and he couldn’t finish the song. He took a deep breath and tried for one more line. “And don't you know that it's just you, hey Jude, you'll do…”

His voice broke, silence fell, the sun slipped into the sea, and he hid his face in his hands.

And shouted in surprise as there was a giant splash-thump, his boat was half-swamped and violently rocking, and he was clinging to a scaled, finned Sam for dear life.

His own life, and his brother’s.

~ * * * ~

Dean drove down the windy coastal highway in silence. His heart lifted every time he looked over and saw Sam there—damp, and, Dean was sure, still faintly greenish. But it was _Sam._ The spell had worked.

“I can’t, uh… seem to get quite dry,” Sam said. He scratched absently at the side of his neck, where his gills had been.

“I know. That part should wear off soon. I hope.”

“That,” said Sam, slicking his wet hair off his forehead, “or I’ll always have that coveted wet look the fashion magazines talk about.”

“My model brother,” Dean answered. His heart lifted with every word. It was the most Sam had said since he’d changed back the night before. Dean was left wondering if Sam regretted his choice.

“Dean,” said Sam after some minutes. “Would you really have let me stay in the ocean?”

Dean almost made a joke. Almost deflected the question or gave Sam some vague non-answer. “I really didn’t want to,” he said finally. “But yeah.”

Another silence. “Thanks,” said Sam finally. “For letting me decide.”

“Do you… remember everything?”

“No. Just… enough.”

The silence was softer now, gentler. Dean didn’t mind it. He didn’t need music to cover this silence.

“I’m really glad you’re still here,” he said finally. “Sorry if you would be happier there. But… I really do need you, Sam.”

Sam smiled sadly, and clapped Dean’s shoulder. “I know, man. I need you, too.”

A warmth Dean barely recognized anymore swept through him at the words, a lightening and easing at the damp touch of Sam’s hand. He reflected, as he guided the Impala skillfully around the tricky curves, that this might be the closest thing to happiness left to him in this world. 

And it was enough.

~The End~

**Author's Note:**

> This story is dedicated with deepest love to my best friend of thirty years, brightly_lit. Sorry it sucks so much here, but thanks for jumping back in the boat with me. <3


End file.
